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highlyeccentricHow could they think women a recreation?
Or the repetition of bodies of steady interest?
Only the ignorant or the busy could. That elm
of flesh must prove a luxury of primes;
be perilous and dear with rain of alternate earth.
Which is not to damn the forested China of touching.
I am neither priestly nor tired, and the great knowledge
of breasts with their loud nipples congregates in me.
The sudden nakedness, the small ribs, the mouth.
Splendid. Splendid. Splendid. Like Rome. Like Loins.
A glamour sufficient to our long marvelous dying.
I say sufficient and speak with earned privilege,
for my life has been eaten in that foliate city.
To ambergris. But not for recreation.
I would not have loved so much for recreation.
Nor for love as the sweet pretend: the children's game
of deliberate ignorance of each to allow the dreaming.
Not for the impersonal belly nor the heart's drunkenness
have I come this far, stubborn, disastrous way.
But for relish of those archipelagoes of person.
To holder her in hand, closed as any sparrow,
and call and call forever until she turn from bird
to blowing woods. From woods to jungle. Persimmon.
To light. From light to princess. From princess to woman
in all her fresh particularity of difference.
Then oh, through the underwater time of night,
indecent and still, to speak to her without habit.
This I have done with my life, and am content.
I wish I could tell you how it is in that dark,
standing in the huge singing and the alien world.
I read this poem for the first time today, and already I love it. I find it... unique, I suppose. It is about a male gaze, but it doesn't strike me as construct of the male gaze, so to speak. Gilbert deliberately distinguishes himself from other male lovers of women, but that's not it. I think it's the fact that it's a poem about him - but not about his dick (compare Catullus and his sparrow). All love poetry is about the lover, but there's very little pedestalling here (compare Yeats): indeed Gilbert invokes tpyical references to pedestalling love-poetry (holding in hand, the bird, persimmon for Persephone, princess types) and blows each one out with something greater, less tame, and ends in her fresh particularity of difference.
Of course, this isn't a love poem, either: the women recalled are, one gathers, more than a few. But there's neither generalising nor comparison here, and I like that.
I suppose my feelings for this poem are much like my feelings on sex with (mostly) straight men. I share recognise something I share in Gilbert's love of women; and at the same time, this poem describes some of kinds or aspects of such attention which I am favourably disposed toward recieving.
Or the repetition of bodies of steady interest?
Only the ignorant or the busy could. That elm
of flesh must prove a luxury of primes;
be perilous and dear with rain of alternate earth.
Which is not to damn the forested China of touching.
I am neither priestly nor tired, and the great knowledge
of breasts with their loud nipples congregates in me.
The sudden nakedness, the small ribs, the mouth.
Splendid. Splendid. Splendid. Like Rome. Like Loins.
A glamour sufficient to our long marvelous dying.
I say sufficient and speak with earned privilege,
for my life has been eaten in that foliate city.
To ambergris. But not for recreation.
I would not have loved so much for recreation.
Nor for love as the sweet pretend: the children's game
of deliberate ignorance of each to allow the dreaming.
Not for the impersonal belly nor the heart's drunkenness
have I come this far, stubborn, disastrous way.
But for relish of those archipelagoes of person.
To holder her in hand, closed as any sparrow,
and call and call forever until she turn from bird
to blowing woods. From woods to jungle. Persimmon.
To light. From light to princess. From princess to woman
in all her fresh particularity of difference.
Then oh, through the underwater time of night,
indecent and still, to speak to her without habit.
This I have done with my life, and am content.
I wish I could tell you how it is in that dark,
standing in the huge singing and the alien world.
I read this poem for the first time today, and already I love it. I find it... unique, I suppose. It is about a male gaze, but it doesn't strike me as construct of the male gaze, so to speak. Gilbert deliberately distinguishes himself from other male lovers of women, but that's not it. I think it's the fact that it's a poem about him - but not about his dick (compare Catullus and his sparrow). All love poetry is about the lover, but there's very little pedestalling here (compare Yeats): indeed Gilbert invokes tpyical references to pedestalling love-poetry (holding in hand, the bird, persimmon for Persephone, princess types) and blows each one out with something greater, less tame, and ends in her fresh particularity of difference.
Of course, this isn't a love poem, either: the women recalled are, one gathers, more than a few. But there's neither generalising nor comparison here, and I like that.
I suppose my feelings for this poem are much like my feelings on sex with (mostly) straight men. I share recognise something I share in Gilbert's love of women; and at the same time, this poem describes some of kinds or aspects of such attention which I am favourably disposed toward recieving.
no subject
Date: 2013-07-04 04:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-04 10:42 am (UTC)